Trips, Gadgets and Upgrades

Come to think of it, I’ll tackle these three items in the title in reverse order:

The reason that it has been so long since I’ve posted anything to this blog was because of the new-and-improved release of Wordpress, version 2.1 (referred to as Ella, as in Fitzgerald), which is the software that I use to publish this blog. I needed a block of time of about 3 hours, I thought. The first step to doing the upgrade was to download both a backup of the database that Wordpress uses (SQL), as well as all of the files that made up the initial blog, taking care to insure that if anything went wrong, I could partially or even completely reconstitute the roughly 200 postings from just the text. I did this once, but then saw some comments. So I put off the upgrade, and therefore, put off any new posts. Finally, yesterday evening I had enough time to very carefully back everything up, delete all of the old blog files (except for the content), and then upload the new version and run the upgrade script. To my surprise, everything worked perfectly. Either I’m better at this than I thought, or the many people who have reported going through an ordeal moving to the new version had more complex sites than I did; I really can’t say.

At any rate, the blog is back, upgraded and improved, and despite deleting and uploading all of those files and performing a few other tasks extremely slowly and carefully, it didn’t take 3 hours; More like 90 minutes. The changes to Loud Murmurs are invisible to you, dear reader. It does serve the pages far faster, and the editor for doing posts has been dramatically improved. There are a few other administrative screens and security rewrites, etc., but again, it’s all behind the scenes. Take it from me, on the other side of the site, we’ve all got new furniture. So welcome to Loud Murmurs 2.1. Long time, no see.

One reason (among many) that I wasn’t able to find time for the upgrade (or posting) was a new gadget. Our newest piece of technology is a gift from my brother and his family, a TiVo. After a long wait, we’ve finally gotten it set up and recording away. It was no small task, because getting Canadian listings require a network connection if you don’t want the box making weekly long-distance phone calls to the states, because the setting for retrieving Canadian listings is — and I swear I’m not making this up — Leo, Wyoming. So, after getting a wireless adapter so that we can use the TiVo with our home network, and after a few other electronic, hardware and software hoops, I’m pleased that I no longer have to choose between catching an episode of Heroes or writing an entry here. Let’s hear it for time-shifting! I should mention that the other advantage to having this PVR (Personal Video Recorder) on the home network is that I can copy any recorded show from the TiVo to my computer, and after some compression and conversion, to my iPod. Too cool.

After my trips to Buffalo and San Francisco, our little drive down to Seattle felt quite short. We visited for a brunch and afternoon with my brother and his family. We had a terrific meal at Monsoon, an upscale Vietnamese restaurant where you can not only get that wonderful classic, Banh Xeo (pronounced Bann-show, it’s a sort of crepe/omelette that actually contains no eggs; the ‘crepe batter’ is a mixture of water, coconut milk and rice flour with a trace of tumeric and folded around handfuls of beansprouts, shrimp and lean pork), but also a terrific Vanilla French Toast made with brioche (which my niece ordered and many of us tasted). We only visited for a short time, but managed to fit in a chilly walk on Seattle’s new Olympic Sculpture Park. We also picked up that afformentioned wireless adaptor for the TiVo, and were back in Vancouver before midnight (but not that much before, due to a stop in Bellingham to do some minor shopping at Target).

There’s lots more to add; when you don’t take note of things right away they pile up. I’ll try and catch up in future posts.

Oh .ca-nada

Since we now have status as Permanent Residents of Canada, I thought that this week I would flex one of my new rights. It’s not one of the more dramatic ones (like the right to work for any employer in any field, not just my sponsor and the line of work that my Provincial Nominee status lists). No, I decided to do something that I’ve wanted to do ever since I knew that it was available: I registered the domain drucker.ca .

I couldn’t legally register a .ca domain until I was a Resident because the top-level-domain .ca is regulated by the governmental agency CIRA, which stands for Canadian Internet Registration Authority. The choices available from the drop-down menu at the CIRA web site for the types of people and organizations that can register a .ca are:

• Aboriginal Peoples indigenous to Canada
• Canadian Citizen
• Canadian Educational Institution
• Canadian Hospital
• Canadian Library Archive or Museum
• Canadian Political Party
• Canadian Trade Union
• Canadian Unincorporated Association
• Corporation (Canada or Canadian province or territory)
• Government or government entity in Canada
• Indian Band recognized by the Indian Act of Canada
• Legal Rep. of a Canadian Citizen or Permanent Resident
• Official mark registered in Canada
• Partnership Registered in Canada
• Trade-mark registered in Canada (by a non-Canadian owner)
• Trust established in Canada
• (and I’m not making this up:) Her Majesty the Queen
• Permanent Resident of Canada

There it is, so I didn’t have to worry about the RCMP coming to break down our doors if I registered drucker.ca before I was a Permanent Resident.

When I told a coworker about this, he said ‘You mean you waited until you really were a Resident to do this? Dude, if I’d known, I’d have bought that domain months ago and now you’d have to buy it from me!’

It’s just ‘parked’ right now. I could never get drucker.com, .org or .net, thanks to the followers of the teachings of Peter Drucker, but here in the Great White North (or rather, the Great Soggy West), there was still no one who cared enough to secure my last name as a Canadian URL.

Is a .ca useful? Well, it’s more important if you’re a Canadian business and want to make it clear that you ship products to others without the extra duties you have to pay if it’s coming from the US. Thus, there is an Amazon.ca and an Apple.ca. There is also a Google.ca and a Yahoo.ca, even though they are quite ubiquitous throughout the world (and Google.cn has been in the news because of censorship issues with the Chinese version of that search engine).

I intend to use it perhaps as a better place to display my resumé and portfolio. I’ll link to this blog from it, but now I’ll have a pretty logical central address for my Internet identity, such as it is.

A Local Online Tech Community Up for Sale

When I first thought of moving to Vancouver, one of the pivotal decisions I made was to come and make a preliminary visit and go to a sort of tech trade show, called Techvibes Massive. It was put on by the web site and associated online community of the first word in that name. As of today, Techvibes is up for sale on eBay. According to the listing:

…why are we selling? Our company originally had a diversified strategy and we’ve recently moved towards a more focused one. Our websites include www.clubzone.com, www.techvibes.com, www.casinozone.com, www.petsmo.com, www.discovervancouver.com… but as of the 2006 we’ve decided to focus our resources 100% on clubZone.com.

Techvibes’ Massive Show was how I found my first job here, and even how we found the place we are now living in! (A chance conversation with a stranger in the Beer Garden at the end of the day ended up with an invitation to have a look at the condo that he was selling as he was moving to Toronto, and the rest…is Real Estate.)

Thousands of sites link in to Techvibes.com, helping the site achieve a Google page rank of 7, and great page indexing. Alta Vista reports over 478,000 inbound links, with over 72,000 pages indexed on Google.

The site currently pulls in approximately $5000 to $10000 per month in revenue from a variety of sources including banner ads, featured listings, google adsense, and seo text links. In it’s prime the site pulled in over $10k per month alone just from Adsense but has dropped off in the past year from site neglect.

If someone has the resources to build Techvibes back up, they could very easily get the site up to in excess of $50k per month with only a few staff.

There includes a double opt-in database of approximately 42,000 profiled members.

The brand name Techvibes is very strong in the Vancouver, BC, Canada Technology community and could easily be leveraged.

The current asking price is $60,000 US (about $70,600 Canadian).

Follow-up: It appears that there is some controversy about this sale, with some members of the community upset about the prospect of their emails and names, etc. being sold off to the highest bidder. The discussion is going on, oddly enough, on the Techvibes site itself.

One more Follow-up: Apparently the listing has been removed from eBay because:

Geesh, well whoever complained to eBay - it worked. They removed the listing saying that it was illegal to sell a database of personal information.

I was actually planning on removing the eBay listing this morning anyways because we’ve had so much interest and most of the inquiries require a fair amount of due diligence… so I don’t think an eBay auction would work unless we were able to provide a lot more information (financials, access to analytics etc.) to the general public.

( -Mike Schwarz, current President of Techvibes)

So the site is still up for sale, but now it will be a far less public transaction.

Home, Sweet (but Cold) Home

The trip back to Vancouver was uneventful, and I really like the service by Qantus. A smooth take-off and landing by a 747, in-seat entertainment (I saw Borat - first half going down, second half coming back), and even on a 1 hour and 50 minute flight, a hot meal. It’s a pity that this affordable and comfortable flight is only offered during Australia’s summer months, but I’ll certainly take it again if the opportunity arises. The arrival at Vancouver airport was smooth and had no problems. The Immigration officer asked about my permanent residency ID card, but when he saw the date of my paperwork, he waved me through with no further questions.

I arrived home from sunny San Francisco (and average days of 15-18° C) to temperatures well below freezing. We’ve finally turned on our gas fire as well as the electric baseboard heater in our bedroom. We don’t need much heat here (it’s a small place and only one set of windows), but it’s definitely needed this week. The small pond out back where our Koi swim has pretty much frozen over again, and I hope they survive another bout of ice over their heads.

I hear from family and friends back East that their winter has continued to be freakishly warm. I’ve always known that our temperature falls when the skies clear, and aside from a bit of snow and rain on Monday or Tuesday, it looks like we’ll be clear and cold for the rest of the week, with highs in the lower single digits.

Responding to the cold weather, I’m making ‘comfort food’ tonight: meatloaf and mushroom sauce, along with cauliflower au gratin (really, puréed cauliflower mixed with a little butter, cream, salt and pepper and topped with shredded Parmesan cheese and run under the broiler for a few minutes).

It’s fun to go to Macworld, but it’s also nice to return home, even if it’s a little colder than I’d like (and oddly enough, Cambridge would have been warmer to return to this year).

And from the Show floor…

Just for fun, I’m making use of the Microsoft blogger lounge, and they have provided me with a shiny iMac, as well as various fizzy beverages. To my right is the Adobe pavilion, where I just saw a demonstration by Russell Brown (an Adobe guru) of some of the new tools for refining selections that they’ve sent to registered users of CS2 (so I guess something is waiting for me when I get home).

A little further off to the right is the enormous Apple booth. Actually, booth is the wrong word. It’s more like the size of a small airport terminal. They’ve been running demonstrations of AppleTV, iLife, Leopard (the next version of OS X) and of course, the iPhone round the clock.

I’d be inserting links to every one of these things, but I don’t have the time. While no one was looking, I installed Firefox.. (Surprisingly, the machine seemed wide open - I don’t know if this was a bit of friendly flexibility, or a lax security policy.) At any rate, it’s installed, and I’ve placed it permanently in this Mac’s dock.

This is my last day at the show, and I’ve met up with a few friends, but not as many as I’d hoped. The fact is, there are so many people here, that the days of simply hanging out on the show floor in the aisles no longer guarantees that you’ll bump into an old friend or acquaintance. As Mac marketshare goes up, the number of people that I know within that market goes down. I should have predicted that.

OK, I’ve heard the movie that iPod Screen Replacement booth to the left that includes shattering glass too many times. Time to end this here. I’ll either wrap up at the hotel tonight or back home.